


If you were an angel, I…

by ShiDreamin



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Hurt/Comfort, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Other, Spoilers for Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:15:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26470996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin
Summary: Would ask of you to silence thee.Dimitri dies. It’s not an accident.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	If you were an angel, I…

Eight.

It’s a magic number. Symmetric horizontally and vertically, two snaky lines drawn in the sand around it. The number of students in each house, smiling faces that turn towards their professor like flowers drawn to the sun. They waltz and they spar and they sing so that one day they may blossom.

Eight. The number of wilted flowers Byleth must scoop up from the deserted seas, staring at the burning remains of their lord.

Eight. The number of times Dimitri dies.

It had been an accident. They were younger then, foolish, tongues loose from ale snuck into their celebration courtesy of none other than the flutter of golden capes. Dimitri had held his stomach and confessed that he hadn’t felt well since earlier that day, odd, considering he hadn’t fallen, hadn’t stumbled, had come out of battle well and alive and _well_

Alive.

“You died,” Byleth had said, plain, flat, words spoken because they could and not because they should. “You died, right,” a hand, pressing on Dimitri’s stomach, tracking those drunken eyes, “from here.”

An arrow that had gone right through the stomach. Byleth had watched the acid bubble straight through him before time had snapped into nothing, and when their sword stole a man’s head from his neck there had been a curdle of satisfaction in their stomach.

Then night turned to day, and the ale had done its job of wiping all minds clean of sloppy mistakes. Dimitri had smiled at Byleth when they greeted them the following day, him and seven others, students. Flower buds.

Blooming under tutelage.

“Are you insane” and “I should have let you die” both linger on their tongue. Every rewind another sheen of sweat, every retreat another lurching moment of nausea. There are more Byleth must care for—brothers and sisters and sons and daughters, that clustered bouquet shoved into their hand, but heavy exhaustion forces their eyes on only one.

An arrow that went through his arm, then a reveal of skin from a chest plate bound wrong turned bloody with a spear, and then an axe too long and too light for the woman whose head Dimitri so angrily vowed for. There had been burning, an alien melting vision that made the world swim as Dimitri boiled within himself, cursed, cursing, and then the trees had grown higher and the sky a little shorter when a wyvern came from behind the clouds to shatter their king into pieces.

Eight flowers, and only one that wilts before the rest, burning away with its dried up leaves and thorns.

“You were careless today,” Byleth says instead of the heated words that bubble within them. Is careless correct? Is that the word for Dimitri’s crooked laughter, the blurry rain in his eyes, the thunder that crackles louder than thoron, furious and betrayed and real?

Is careless what it is when Dimitri stumbles back so that he may be shattered into pieces?

“You worry too much,” Dimitri spits, a tone not unlike Felix’s own when he hisses out curses and banes of the king he wears the symbol of. Though his face is angled to meet Byleth’s, his gaze is somewhere beyond the crumbled monastery walls. “I will not die until I have her head.”

Where once there was ale and merry laughter weaving through the halls to excuse the violence of children in war, there is nothing but barren grounds and bloodied armor to distract Byleth today. Neither of those are distractions either; Ashe’s low cry and Annette’s shriek ringing in their ears, the sorry sight of their leader cut into two.

“You died today.”

If Sothis were alive, she may have berated their words. It was no secret that she found their usage of her power at times silly, unknowing of their worth, but if there were any time she and they alike were to agree on freezing two steps back it would be now—the lingering of their hollow confession.

Dimitri’s jaw works but it is slow, haggard, and Byleth presses a hand against his chest regardless. Small, smaller without his armor, and yet so broad, engulfing in his height, his width, his very barebones stature. Even without the decorations, Dimitri has the stance of a king.

“Right here.”

Byleth can trace the cut of an arrow gone too deep, a swarming spell that had eroded the skin to nothing, a spear that split the armor and gouged through the flesh. The work of years, of months, and then days, hours, minutes. Seconds.

As though every moment Byleth looked away, Dimitri was out looking for death.

“You’re mistaken.” A warning and a reminder, mashed too tightly together despite the odds and ends sticking out. Dimitri shakes his head, laughing, though there is no mirth in that tone, no joy in his eyes. Only the same indifference he wears like a crown when he can crawl out of the silence. “Who _am_ I, if I’m dead? Or do you think I’ve come to haunt you too?”

Too?

“No,” Byleth says. “You cannot haunt me.” Haunting is reserved for ghosts, for ghouls, for those demons chained to the earth by their wants and their failures. There are those Byleth is certain laps at their feet—students felled by their blade, mercenaries who cursed their name, and ordinary civilians, nothing more than the man next door who planted corn stalks and the woman who weaved them into baskets.

Jeralt, who died even when Byleth rewound time so tightly it snapped.

“I saved you, this time.”

“This time? Would you let me die another time, then?” Dimitri had always been sharp, cleverness undone by his boyish honesty and knightly goals. But he’s forgotten those things now, older, colder, with words aimed only to shackle and kill.

He sounds hopeful. Byleth takes no pleasure to squashing it.

“You were smiling. The whole time. Every time.” Broad, wide spreads of his jaw matted red with blood. Dimitri had not laughed since they’ve reunited, not truly, the kind of gentle chuckle Byleth had once been an audience to wiped away. The laugh he had borne on the battlefield, deep from his belly, was hollow and wicked.

“The Empire cannot kill me,” Dimitri insists again. His fingers tighten, yet his feet stay flat. He’s run off before mid-conversation, but this one, _this one_ , must interest him.

“They did,” Byleth confesses, shallow in its truthfulness, “Eight times.” They straighten, coming closer once more to place the palm of their hand against Dimitri’s neck. He stiffens, and still, his feet stay flat. Allowing.

Byleth’s lips part.

“Annette,” they whisper, tracing the line where that disappeared incision was. “Couldn’t get to the mage in time. You ran off, and an arrow sliced your throat. I had to protect you, even if it meant she could die.”

“Mercedes.” Their fingers trail downwards until the crook of the armor resting under Dimitri’s ribcage, pressing upward. “She needed to heal Ashe, and you were getting cut into by two swordsmen. An archer got her.” She hadn’t screamed, nor cried, when her limbs grew numb. Instead, she had taken the last of her time and repaired the wound on her comrade. “I went back, and told her to tend to you instead.”

“Ashe.” Leftward more, to the grand blue incision on Dimitri’s armor. Blooming above his lungs. “I asked you to protect him. You didn’t, and got yourself impaled for your work.” His fingers twitch, yet he allows Byleth to trace the armor’s worn edges. “Ashe died before you did. He asked me to protect his siblings.”

“Sylvain.” Dimitri ducks his head now, though his legs don’t move when Byleth slides their fingers downward to prod at his stomach. “Felix. They died together. There was a pincer attack and—” Dimitri had run off. Had forced his shield to come behind him, and his shield’s shield, and then there had been the dizzying scream from the sky when they fell.

“Ingrid.” Palms flat on his shoulders. How could they pinpoint one spot when the spell had left Dimitri aflame, their lord burning to death on the bloodied hills? “Her pegasi went down. I needed to go, but,” the screams. The arrows. The pointed cries that left Ingrid’s mouth, commanding Byleth to return. To protect the friends, she had left. “She asked me to protect you.”

They snake their arms around Dimitri. His chest is broader now, firmer than when he was young, but Byleth’s fingers meet each other eventually, tugging Dimitri close into a strange approximation of a hug.

“Dedue,” they whisper. Dimitri stiffens; how could he not? “took the swarm for you. Then the thoron, and then the spear.” Endless, at the height of their battle, when it seemed as though they would be trampled flat by the Empire’s red steps. He died, tripping over fallen men to protect Dimitri better, to give Dimitri one more step, and Dimitri had spent those seconds rushing into a man’s spear with a laugh that shattered. “You died charging.”

His arms tighten and for a moment Byleth steels their legs, preparing to be pushed to the ground. Instead, Dimitri exhales, slow, unsteady, his arms rising. Closing around Byleth.

No longer such an odd approximation so much as a true hug, now.

“That’s seven. And you?”

That strange welded dagger that had killed Jeralt had impaled itself into Byleth. Or the men in long black robes that seemed to warp with perfect accuracy, wielding magic Byleth had never seen before. That moment they thought it possible to recruit their old friends, students they had cherished—Bernadetta, Dorothea, Linhardt. Only to receive a crushing axe for their attempt.

But they had never regretted it. No tears for themselves, their phantom pains, the scars that should run down their back but doesn’t. Time bends, and they open their eyes again, eager and ever wider.

“Not me,” Byleth says. Dimitri sags besides them, a doll with its strings cut, and they grip him harder, letting his hair tickle their collarbones as he droops.

They stand in silence for perhaps much longer than socially acceptable, a man and a man rather than a tactician and their beast.

“It is easier.” The words are slow, molasses, as they unfurl from Dimitri’s lips. He presses his jaw to Byleth’s shoulder for a moment, as though considering to speak his words into cloth, before crooking upwards once more.

“It is sometimes easier to seek death than to…” His words trail off once more. The moon is up tonight, more than a half but less than a whole, some untangled three quarters that is almost round enough to be a circle. Dimitri’s fingers tangle within themselves.

“I wondered if you would let me die.”

Dimitri ducks his head once more against Byleth’s shoulder. They allow it, stretching their own arms higher, wishing then that Dimitri had not grown so tall so it would be easier to pat his head, to run their fingers along his nape in the same soothing patterns he had once wanted five years past. Five years for him, but for them, months at the most. Their fingers twitch in muscle memory.

“Why would I?”

They receive something of an amused huff in response. Dimitri turns his head, angling up once more, tracing the moonlight.

“I don’t know.” Dimitri’s eyes slip shut, his exhale shaky. “I thought the goddess would end my life. Or Edelgard’s,” he inhales here, sharp, “but I would be happy to go down with her. Fodlan would be better off without us.”

“You’d leave _Claude_ in charge, then?” Byleth’s incredulous words earn them another huff and a shake of Dimitri’s head. Dimitri’s arms slacken, pulling away, though theirs stay put. An unseemly hug once more.

“I don’t know about Fodlan,” Byleth starts, sighing as they drag their fingers upward and _oh_ , it appears they can manage to comb their fingers through Dimitri’s hair at this angle. “But I am certain that we’d be upset without you. They would all die for you, after all.” They had. And they will, again, a certainty Byleth would bet their life on.

“They shouldn’t,” Dimitri insists, though his tone is shaky, wet, following Byleth’s weight when their arms finally come loose around his sides.

“Dedue.” Around the back, a wound straight through. “Ingrid.” Upwards, cupping his shoulders, rubbing small circles into the tense muscles. “Felix, and Sylvain.” Down again, to his stomach. “Ashe.” That deep blue incision, a taunt for those foolish enough to strike their king. “Mercedes.” His ribcage, hooking their fingers under that armor. “Annette.” Up so that Byleth may press their fingers once more, following the aged scars along Dimitri’s jaw.

“They love you,” Byleth says, smiling at the wet sheen blurring Dimitri’s eyes. “They all do.”

“That’s seven,” Dimitri repeats, warmer than his last. “And you?” Byleth’s hands rise higher, cupping his face properly, bringing Dimitri down. Dimitri tenses, his jaw working. But his feet stay flat, planted. Allowing.

Dimitri’s lips part.

“I love you.”

The kiss is there and gone in an instant. Dimitri’s eyes have pinched shut; Byleth swallows a laugh at the sight, the nervous thrumming of Dimitri’s heart evident even under armor. They peek open despite themselves, wandering over Byleth’s face with a pink flush more befitting of Dimitri’s age.

“Live.” It is impossible not to think of Dimitri’s laughter, his lunges. The hollow eyes and hollow wants of a man who thinks himself doomed. Dimitri swallows and Byleth chases that, moving where Dimitri will not.

“Live,” Byleth repeats, warmer too. “So I that may love you another day.”

Dimitri’s feet shift. His shoulders stiffen, and for a moment Byleth thinks he will leave.

“I’ll try,” Dimitri mumbles, instead, and it is cold relief that freezes Byleth when his arms come around them, his face seeking solace into their shoulder. They huff, stretching their arms. Their feet stay flat, neither wanting to move. Their odd arrangement of a hug.

“That’s all I ask.”

**Author's Note:**

> Birthday fic, birthday fic! Yay!!
> 
> Some good ol cold dimileth for one of my friends whose birthday is today <3 Also have a cute dima icon on my twitter ofc. I stick with NB!Byleth generally but feel free to interpret as FB or MB.
> 
> I think often about the original FE3H plot where Edelgard knows of Byleth's power and also shares it (as a result of experiments) and how that would have impacted Byleth's relationships with Dimitri or Claude. It would have been cool to have some funky skills from other nations (since Fodlan has crests, why can't Brigid have funky magic or Almyra weird not-faith-but-also-faith magic?? What about Duscur and Sreng, surely there must have been some ye of old age dragon magic laying around?) If the lords had known of Byleth's ability, would they take advantage of it? (yes)
> 
> Judge my life choices on [ twitter ](https://twitter.com/shidreamin/)


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